Maloney's Law by Anne Brooke

if it hadn’t been for that last extra word under Aqua. And then again, maybe I wouldn’t have seen it at all, or even bothered with it if it hadn’t been for knowing about Bluesky. Where the phrases have been placed, they look like a copy of something else that’s been deleted or partially saved in the course of being transferred or downloaded. It can’t be that though, they’re too patterned; a partial transfer would be much more random. Still, we were lucky to spot it. I was just being thorough.’
    ‘As you always are. Thank you, good work.’
    She blushes and gives me half a smile. ‘You’re welcome. But we’re no better off. Without the other half of the file, we still don’t know what it means.’
    ‘No, but now we know there’s something there, something to find out. No matter what we’ve been told.’
    ‘That’s what you like best, Paul, isn’t it?’
    ‘What?’ The sudden switch in subject matter almost leads to a breach of PI Rule Number Six: Never let your staff be more than one step ahead of you, and certainly never show it if they are.
    ‘It’s what you like best,’ Jade says again. ‘The chance for discovery, bringing a new fact to light. It gets you every time, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Is that a bad thing for an investigation agency? If we didn’t want to find things out, where would we be?’
    ‘Sure, but what are we going to do about finding the missing half of the file? Maybe I can go to Egypt this time, get the half you left behind in a more civilised and female way, without having to jump out a window?’
    ‘Dream on.’ The thought of Jade mixed up with Blake’s mob makes me shudder. ‘Anyway, if Blake’s anything like the man I imagine him to be, and there’s anything else he doesn’t want me to find, it’ll be somewhere I’d never think of in a thousand years, or he’ll have destroyed it.’
    ‘So what will you do?’
    My sigh is ragged and comes from the gut. ‘I’ll think of something. I’ll have to if I’m going to persuade a glimmer of truth out of Dominic, and that seems the only avenue to explore at the moment to get any of the answers. He’s not a murderer, but he might know something to implicate Blake.’
    There’s a pause, and Jade folds her arms, skidding her chair back so she all but runs me over.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘I forgot to ask, how was your meeting?’
    ‘I filled him in as best I could. He’s happy to wait for the official report.’
    I go back to my desk. The rest of the day is spent catching up on paperwork and keeping my other clients at bay. The main subjects occupying my thoughts are what Jade’s discovery might mean and how I can make best use of it for my next meeting with Dominic.
    Five hours and thirteen minutes later, a calculation that includes the seventeen-minute lunch-break I allot myself, we’re out of the office. A quick drink at The Bell and Book, which looks as if it could use the custom tonight, and then I’m waving her off on her bike. As she spins her way ’round the corner, I turn my steps in the opposite direction.
    It’s only then that something occurs to me, something I should have picked up on earlier, if only my head hadn’t been full of Dominic and sex. The tramp. When he’d bumped into me at the office, there’d been no smell. And the bottle of whisky he’d been waving was full.

Chapter Seven
    At home, there’s no-one lurking in the street or the small scraggly bushes, but my muscles only relax when I’m inside with the door double locked behind me. The wait for my first taste of the Highland Park is a long one.
    By the second sip, I’ve checked every room — a mission that doesn’t take long — and shut out the world outside behind the comfort of curtains. By the third sip I’m sprawled on the sofa in the living room staring at the unlit fireplace. I haven’t got Dominic what he says he wants. No complete evidence that Kenzie & Co. are crooked and he shouldn’t be mixed up with them at any